Steve Seyler at the March 8, 2016 CHC Board meeting, announcing that there will be no late-night BID Patrol.
Recall that, at its Board meeting on February 18, 2016, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance spent over 40 minutes discussing LAPD’s request to have the BID Patrol work until 4 a.m. on weekends. Andrews International VP Bill Farrar recounted a meeting with CD13 representative Mitch O’Farrell, claiming that the CM was eager to cover the costs. This led me to write to O’Farrell opposing this plan. Now, at the Central Hollywood Coalition Board meeting that took place on Tuesday, March 8, Steve Seyler and Kerry Morrison announced that, not only are the plans to extend the BID Patrol’s hours cancelled, but Peter Zarcone, formerly CO of LAPD’s Hollywood Division, has been transferred to 77th Street.

Peter Zarcone in happier days on February 18, 2016.
Seyler foreshadowed his announcement at the beginning of his presentation (as always, there’s a full transcription below), stating that “…[w]e got sort of hung up with this late-night patrol and it sort of took us off our mission…” But the full import didn’t become clear until later in the report, when Fabio Conti asked “Can you tell us a little bit of the change in deployment. Is it going to happen?” Steve waffled a little, but Kerry Morrison stated definitively: “Yeah…it’s not happening.” Of course, the reasons aren’t given, and it’ll probably take me months to track them down. Maybe my letter had some effect or maybe not, but this is certainly an abrupt ending to a plan over which as recently as two weeks ago everyone at the HPOA and A/I was overflowing with bubbly anticipation. Perhaps more will be revealed at the HPOA Board meeting on the 18th.

Furthermore, as part of this revelation, it came out that Peter Zarcone has been reassigned to the 77th Street Division, and Fabio asked if he was leaving because of the late-night hours plan. In a sane world his coordination of private security guards taking over LAPD duties would certainly have been grounds for some kind of command intervention. Maybe that is what happened here, it’s too early to say. Kerry Morrison, however, denied it on camera and then everyone chuckled. So we’ll see what we see, but meanwhile, mazel tov!

Steven Seyler: Good afternoon, everyone, good to see you. I’m just going to kind of skip through the report. At the end of the year we met with Kerry and her staff. Basically what we wanted to know is what can we do to improve this year. Some of the issues we came up with: More visibility with our high visibility patrols, bike patrols, foot patrols, would be desired. Avoiding mission creep, which is a constant problem because people are always trying to get us to do more and more and we have to resist that [unintelligible] what we’re supposed to be doing. Engaging other area BIDs. We’ve started that process. We got sort of hung up with this late-night patrol and it sort of took us off our mission, but we started the first steps for meeting with other BIDs, and it’s topics like for downtown, like abandoned property. Very dangerous issue. What is abandoned property, what is trash, we don’t want to get involved in hauling away somebody’s possessions. So that’s in the works, and we’re just going to communicate more and see if we can prove ourselves. Problem solving during homeless and other topics, which is what we do every day, we’re going to continue that. We want to take as many of you as possible on ride-alongs with us so you can see, you know, a different view of the BID. And so we encourage that and we’re ready to kind of set that up any time you’re ready. We’re on from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., so we can pretty much accommodate you any time during the day.
Fabio Conti: [unintelligible]
SS: Ride-alongs! We’d like to take you out in our vehicle with the guys, and it could be whenever you’re available. It could be at noon, go out for an hour, it could be at 6 a.m. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to see the different times, when we do different things. Six a.m. is very different from 3 p.m. So we’d really like to kind of push that, get as many of you as possible to get out there and see what we’re doing. Another thing, proactively seek ways to get businesses to kind of harden the target. Look for problems. How can they be more efficient? Kind of make it less inviting for crime [unintelligible] to happen there.

…[blah blah blah rapport heroism blah blah blah]…

Steve Seyler: How we see the homeless, it’s a big part of our problem solving. We’re not enablers. [unintelligible] What we’re trying to do is move people from a life of squalor and mental illness into permanent supportive housing. And that’s under Kerry’s direction. You could call her a leader in Los Angeles in this. I know she even has a fellowship now, so pretty impressive. She’s led us in this path and we are totally committed to it.

…[blah blah blah rapport heroism blah blah blah]…

Steve Seyler: Our training for this period involved live fire night shooting in anticipation of this possible night patrol. As soon as we heard we might be doing this we started ramping up our training. We had a lot of massive defensive tactics training during this period. We had training on illegal dumping, hoping that we could at some point help work on that. Joe Mariani was also in the class. Driver safety, workplace safety, and legal update. Our deployment remained the same, 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m on Sunday. Yes?

Fabio Conti: Can you tell us a little bit of the change in deployment. Is it going to happen? Has it been…

SS: [unintelligible] to learn, you know…

FC: So no…

Kerry Morrison: It’s not…

SS: [unintelligible] …along with you. I wanted to see whatever directions you give me, I’ll do my very best…

KM: Yeah…it’s not happening.

SS: No change.

FC: It’s not why Zarcone’s leaving from the…

KM: No, no.

[chuckling]

SS: We do have a good new captain coming in, so I think we’re going to be fine.

KM: Yeah, I think he will… Captain Zarcone’s been transferred to 77th Division…back to 77th Division and Captain Palka is coming back to Hollywood from 77th.

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